Censorship under challenge in Ukrainian parliament

by Simon Pirani

Ukrainian journalists last week threatened nationwide strike action to fight censorship.

Andriy Shevchenko, chairman of the independent journalists' trade union founded last month, told parliamentary hearings on press freedom: "If the screws get turned any tighter, we'll strike."

The parliamentary chamber rocked with applause for Shevchenko, an anchorman dismissed from Novy Kanal TV station after resisting instructions to slant stories, who said censorship exists "not de jure but de facto".

Dmitry Tabachnik, deputy prime minister, admitted that Ukraine - where journalists are routinely killed, beaten, sacked and threatened - is "not perfect". But he claimed journalists needed to exercise "self restraint" to protect Ukraine's international image.

Mikhail Tomenko, chairman of a parliamentary commission on freedom of information, said the "hidden hand of censorship" ensured minimal coverage of anti-government demonstrations on 16 September, the largest in recent history.

Those protests marked the second anniversary of the killing of internet news site editor Gyorgy Gongadze - which Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma was accused of encouraging, after a former bodyguard made public audio tapes of Kuchma and his cronies discussing harming Gongadze.

A new wave of censorious measures has in recent months added to anger at official failure to investigate Gongadze's death, and led in October to the formation of the new union, which believes workplace organisation is key to resisting censorship.

The censors' most notorious innovation are "theme-sheets" ("temniki") from the presidential administration, telling broadcasters how to slant coverage. One of many examples presented to the parliamentary hearings "requested" TV stations not to mention the 16 September demonstrations.

The censors are trying to "tame" agencies, the hearings were warned by Aleksandr Kharchenko, chief editor of UNIAN agency, where new owners are trying to enforce pro-presidential bias. Kharchenko said the mysterious death in Belarus in November of another prominent Ukrainian agency editor, Mikhail Kolomiets, was "indicative of the type of press freedom we have here".

Other methods of shutting up journalists reported to the hearings included the detention of a newspaper editor in Crimea on baseless conspiracy-to-murder charges; the pulling of TV documentaries that local authorities dislike; and suits for unlimited libel damages, especially against local papers, to silence criticism of local politicians and businessmen.

Deputies are drafting legislation to limit libel damages and strengthen a currently unworkable law against preventing journalists doing their job.

But the day after the hearings it was business as usual for Ukraine's state institutions. Reporters walked out of a press conference at the state prosecutor's office in protest at an arbitrary refusal to accredit Ukrainska Pravda, the prominent news site founded by the murdered Gongadze.